


Luna³

by waterfallliam



Category: Proxy Series - Alex London
Genre: Chickens, Dialogue, Gen, Introspection, Missing Scene, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 04:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15549834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterfallliam/pseuds/waterfallliam
Summary: “I think it’s time I got a haircut. What do you think?” Liam asked. It no longer just tickled the tops of his ears, but hung heavy with sweat.Luna looked at him with one of her beady eyes, looking as if she knew all his secrets, as if she knew how he kissed Syd’s forehead and made up lullabies to sing him.





	Luna³

**Author's Note:**

> set alongside/after daydreamer, the short story sequel to guardian (if you haven't read it yet, you can get a copy by [signing up for alex london's newsletter here](http://www.calexanderlondon.com))  
> hope you enjoy

The storage bin lid hit the tub, sounding like the all too familiar thunk of a body falling to the ground in the dark. Liam used scissors to open the bag of grain he’d retrieved, making sure to spill none as he filled the feeder tray. It looked like an old hubcap from the retro vehicles he’d seen in Arcadia, something old finding a new purpose. Just like Liam. Twisting the bag shut again, he lifted the tray with his metal hand, the faint clink a background noise he couldn’t tune out.

His glare that could make adults shake with fear had no effect on the three chickens in the yard. They looked at him with beady eyes, dark and expectant.

“Calm down, Luna,” Liam said, his voice soft so as not to disturb Syd. “You’ll get to stuff your face in a minute.”

Now came the tricky part. Liam reached into his pocket to retrieve the potato peelings that had been left over from the broth that was simmering on the stove. The slivers looked gold in the evening sun, but their opulence was as fake as the immutability of the old system. He spread them out amongst them, leading to copious squawking and pecking. “That’s it,” Liam muttered.

He felt proud of them, these three living creatures he was managing to care for. If he could, he would teach them how to fight. He’d have his own strike team. They could help him by attacking with their beaks and being a noisy distraction. He knew he was being silly. He tried it on sometimes, to see how it fit.

Not wasting any more time watching them, Liam carefully swapped the empty hub cap for the full one, and placed it on the window ledge to be tidied away later. For now, he was content to watch his chickens eat.

“The pile of junk out back of the Locus is almost as tall as me now,” Liam said. Luna didn’t reply, but then she never did. As the survivors of the sickness had started going through the ruins of Old Detroit again, they’d begun to collect the scrap left by the Reconciliation. So many people had died, leaving enough space for multiple smaller communities to happily coexist in the city. Marie had told him she didn’t think it would last. He was inclined to agree.

She had plans for moving away from the city when their group was strong enough. Reestablishing society had to occur in steps, she would insist.  She openly blamed the super structures for a lot of humanity’s troubles. It was fact that they could only work with mass production, with technology—with so many things they had either cast off or had no access to. It was hierarchy, she’d profess. Cities demanded the kind of hierarchy which bred exploitation and domination. Maybe that would be the next great reboot of society: when someone worked out how to avoid those pitfalls.

There was no one left for Liam to take orders from but himself. He was done with that life. He had a purpose beyond being the tool of others now. Protecting Syd was what he wanted. They were building something here.

“I think it’s time I got a haircut. What do you think?” Liam asked. It no longer just tickled the tops of his ears, but hung heavy with sweat.

Luna looked at him with one of her beady eyes, looking as if she knew all his secrets, as if she knew how he kissed Syd’s forehead and made up lullabies to sing him. She looked at him before leaning forward, quick as lightning, and rubbed her beak at his hair. It was brighter than her rusty feathers, but not as soft. How they were not matted was still a fact he marveled at: evolution’s illusion of ingenuity.

Sometimes Liam wondered at how animals that had once been perfectly adapted to their habitats were faring, now that their environments had changed so often in a single lifetime. He had changed in reaction to the changes in his life: he’d been a child, a soldier, a revolutionary, a killer, a protector… who he was now, what kind of person he _could_ be now, was still as murky as used bathwater.

Luna rubbed her beak against him again, this time the curve of his neck. His training wasn’t something he could switch off: evading her touch was as automatic as breathing. But he moved back, held himself there as it tickled. He felt a gentleness he hadn’t known before. It was in how he held her, how he ran his fingers through her soft feathers, her weight warm and reassuring in his lap.

Her head rested against his chest, just under his old tattoo. Even under his shirt, he could feel it burning into his skin, the inky blue lines that had felt akin to some kind of greater destiny. His fantasies of freeing the world and being the one to bring about the forgiveness of all debts had been just that: boyhood fantasies. In the end, even the destruction of the old system had cost. The Reconciliation had proven themselves to be hypocrites, the will of the few condemning the many to death all over again.

Liam didn’t know exactly who Syd had been before everything, what _exactly_ he had lost. Maybe Syd would tell him when he woke up. Loss was inevitable in life, Liam thought, watching his hand gleam and he stroked Luna. That particular pain would sometimes worm its way under his skin, burrowing itself into his chest. Losing things was easy. Building them was harder. Not the shack that he had built for himself and Syd, but connection, trust, society.

The thrum of emotion under his skin had  not been welcome in his life for a long time. If it wasn’t the heady rush of adrenaline or rage to be tempered into violence, there hadn’t been much use for it in his life. He’d thought his feelings for Syd would be a hindrance, but if he’d been the perfect soldier so many more people would have died, and he’d be all alone, or dead. Now, he was vulnerable—but also alive. It felt fragile, like bearing the pulse point at the bottom of his neck to a stranger.

Just under his blue tattoo, where Luna’s head was, he’d gotten a new tattoo of a crescent moon. The woman had only had enough ink for a simple outline, a black that bled purple against his skin. Liam’s world had focused down to pain, even as she had talked to herself in soft voice. Occasionally a word or two had floated across to him, interspersed with the needle. “He made the moon to mark the seasons,” and she’d finished one side.

He was reminded of a time he’d been camped out in the desert on his return from the Mountain City. He’d been alone after his unsuccessful solo mission to kill Eron Brindle. The clouds had crept up on him in the dark, a grey older than concrete or steel. When the sky had finally burst, Liam had no shelter. Water sluiced him free of the dust from the city, pummelling his skin almost hard enough to bruise. Wiping the water from his eyes had been a lost cause.

Until that journey back, Liam had always thought of nature as something predatory. Humanity’s oldest enemy perhaps, apart from itself. That was before he’d seen the buds sprouting from the earth that had looked more like rust than the breathing thing it became. A myriad of plants reaching no higher than his ankles cropped up, the carpet of vegetation reaching to the edge of Liam’s line of sight. Unlike the desert, which would withdraw back into itself when the rain stopped, he felt as if the new well of life he’d found in their budding world would not become dry and cracked anytime soon.

He’d tried his best to listen, after, as the woman continued talking to herself while she cleaned her needles, but the hum of his own blood in his ears had been too loud. He’d a chosen a moon because of Syd’s eyes, an idea so romantic and removed from his duty that there could only be room for it now. There was room on his body for a lifetime, a physicality of thought he’d never been able to embrace before. Now his body, as well as his thoughts, belonged to this new world.  He’d ask her what the words meant, when he saw her again at the Locus.

A few times when he’d been down there in the evenings, Marie had got him to leave early with her, just after the day’s announcements and decisions. After she’d checked on Syd, she would join him in the yard. Liam had never really had a friend before Syd and Marie. It felt strange, but good. Tonight, Luna purred softly in her arms. It had taken Marie a couple visits for Luna to warm up to her enough to let herself be pet.

“She’s so warm,” Marie said, hesitantly reaching to pet her.

“Neck pets are her favorite,” Liam replied. They were both sitting cross legged in a pool of evening light. Syd had been sleeping soundly today. The doctor was scheduled to visit again tomorrow. She had the most accurate records of how long people had spent in comas, but Liam guessed that if Syd was going to wake, it would be soon. He was strong. Liam didn’t think he’d last this long just to not make it—that wasn’t like Syd.

“I had never seen a chicken until a year ago,” Marie said. “Never eaten organic food either. Old me would be surprised at how quickly I got used to it.”

“You never seem to have any trouble when it’s something you believe in,” Liam said carefully. There was more to most people than met the eye, but he had never had much reason to look before.

“I surprised myself. I always… worry that I’ll do it wrong. Eat something raw that should be cooked, make the wrong decision…” She bit her lip. The sun glinted off the storage bins, a hazy orange that hung heavy on the lids of Liam’s eyes. He gave Marie as much time as she needed.

“When the sickness first hit, my parents were the only thing I cared about. My—the Reconciliation’s ideology, the people, what I _believed_ in was suddenly secondary. Am I really that inconsistent, that weak, that unreliable?” Her words were laced with bitterness.

“Weak and unreliable aren’t words I’d use to describe you,” Liam said. She looked at him with dark eyes. No trace of the purple that had been there when they had first met remained. Her hands were rougher and her body leaner than that day when the world had first been remade. She’d gained a hardness, but it didn’t overshadow her compassion.

“I just—I still feel like I’m looking for something. For someone to say it’s okay, when I know it’s not, I don’t deserve—” Marie cut herself off. It was only when Luna squawked in her lap, that Marie resumed petting her.

“Who’s to say what any of us deserve?” Liam asked. In the late light, his metal hand burned amongst Luna’s feathers, an illusion of warmth for the cold weapon of death. The question of forgiveness was not unfamiliar to him.

His hand that had ended lives had also held. It had helped build homes. It had saved his and Syd’s life without ending another. The past couldn’t be erased, but it didn’t have to define the future in its entirety. “I think you can be the person you need.”

“The person that I know I can become,” Marie nodded.

“No, well yes.” Liam took a moment to compose his thoughts. “What I mean is that you are the only one who can forgive yourself. Or not forgive yourself, but know that it’s okay anyway. There is no great scale to balance things. There is what we do in the moment.”

Their new world was so rough, so raw. They were all criminals in the eyes of the old world. The Reconciliation had killed those who had become criminals in their new world. And then they’d become criminals all over again, and people had suffered anyway. Maybe there was no true end to suffering, _but_ there was still much to be done before then. There were lives to save,  fields to plow, homes to build, people to become.

Liam didn’t know much about history. He didn’t know if they had done it all before.

“In some ways it’s more complicated now. There is no enemy, no one to fight against,” Marie said, morose.

Liam held up his hands in surrender. “I know less about that than you.” There was no elected government, all decisions were to be made together in their community. That didn’t mean that people didn’t look to Marie, either as an important figure from the past, or because her determination was infectious.

“How do you see it? You were raised a soldier.”

“I don’t know how long it will take us to fight amongst ourselves, but it would take a great effort not to. It’s senseless, when we could be working together to protect ourselves from food shortages. Fight together against the land that needs plowing, eh?” Liam tried for some humor.

“Your bedside manner still needs some work,” Marie laughed. “Though, Syd would probably disagree, eh?” She raised an eyebrow. Liam felt a telltale blush stain his cheeks.

Yesterday, when Syd had woken for a few minutes, they’d had time for a few sentences, an actual exchange. Syd had made fun of his hair, but he’d also called him his handsome boyfriend. The memory alone was enough to make Liam blush harder.

“What about that girl I saw you with last week—you two looked pretty friendly!” Finally, Liam had some ammunition he could use against her when she teased him.

“She’s just friendly!” Marie said indignantly, rubbing the short hairs at the back of her neck with her free hand.

“Friendly or _friendly_ friendly?” Liam giggled, fighting to regain his composure.

“She’s pretty, okay? I don’t even know if she likes me like that, but…”

“You should—” what was it normal people did to be romantic again? “Ask her on a date.”

“I—what would we do?”

“I don’t know! Have lunch, look at interesting pieces of scrap, spar.”

“Spar? Really?”

“You’re better with people,” Liam pointed out.

“I guess so. I wish that was enough.”

What was it that Marie imagined she lacked? She was always striving for a better world, which meant recognizing areas for improvement. But this felt like more than that.

“What’s missing?” She was right, of course. He’d never been good with people. Weapons, death? Sure. People? Tricky.

“If I made the wrong choice then, who’s to say I’m not making it again? What if I keep making bad choices?”

The last Luna had just wandered over, hovering in his periphery. All it took was a gentle peck at his elbow for him to make room on his lap. He now had two chickens to keep his hands occupied, both warm and soft to touch.

“Your concern for your parents wasn’t misplaced. The Reconciliation hadn’t been taking the threat the infection posed seriously. Your faith in the system was because you thought it was best for people, and when it wasn’t…”

“That’s a kind way of putting it,” Marie smiled halfheartedly.

“It’s more than that. You and Syd were the only ones who insisted on _doing something_ about it.”

“We still failed.”

“We did our best.” They should have died, but Liam was infinitely grateful the didn’t. “I don’t know if that can ever be enough, but…” his train of thought eluded him, trailing off into abstraction.

“Hey,” Marie said, and reached out with her free hand to touch him where his metal one joined his arm. “You’re not alone, Liam. None of us are. We’re stronger together. Our best will be enough.”

Liam smiled at her words of comfort. “Don’t you see? That’s who you are.” She championed them automatically, an unwavering faith in the potential of humanity.

They stayed in the yard a little while longer, waiting for the evening chill to compensate for the day’s humidity. The chirp of the Lili birds framed the rest of their conversation, which was focused on the Locus again. Marie was trying to organize a story circle. Liam wanted to know how he could help. Soon, Syd would wake up. The future didn’t look so dark from where Liam was sitting.


End file.
